Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman’s stirring experience of seeing IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot, Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days:“I will still take advantage of it—but I no longer think of it as something I got for free”), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a “nightmarish neon blur” of KFC, BK and McDonald’s signs in Texas, he realizes: “We’re on a fool’s errand”), and reads bumper stickers (the “Osama Loves your SUV” sticker he read turns into the thesis of his “Fill ‘er up with Dictators” chapter). This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee’s signs.
—
Matt Taibbi, destroying Thomas Friedman yet again
(via hellofriend & cajunboy)
I’m reading “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” now. Well, sort of (if you’re at all familiar with this whole climate change thing, you’ve read it all before). It reminds me of what we used to say of sociology classes — the study of the obvious. (I minored in sociology — a phone-in degree if ever there was one.)
To paraphrase my dad, Friedman doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. He’s full of pronouncements about the way the world is and predictions of the way it will be and opinions on what we should do (cough, cough, INVADE IRAQ), but he takes no responsibility for his words. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s jumping aboard the global warming bus, and he’ll hop off if something sexier comes along.
That said, the man knows how to turn a phrase, and I really enjoyed this New Yorker profile of him.
January 15, 2009
"J.F.K. took us to the moon. Let B.H.O. take America back to school."
Thomas Friedman makes the case for math and science education and stimulating technological innovation in addition to infrastructure and green job development:
If we spend $1 trillion on a stimulus and just get better highways and bridges — and not a new Google, Apple, Intel or Microsoft — your kids will thank you for making it so much easier for them to commute to the unemployment office or mediocre jobs.
Barack Obama gets it, but I’m not sure Congress does. “Yes,” Mr. Obama said on Thursday, “we’ll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges and schools by eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we’ll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy.” Sure that means more smart grids and broadband highways, he added, but it also “means investing in the science, research and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and entire new industries.”
January 11, 2009
earth FAIL
My family has never bought a Christmas tree. I find them unspeakably depressing in the weeks after the holiday, abandoned in the cold by the side of the road, their needles drooping and their dead trunks starting to shrivel.
We have a wee Norfolk Island pine that lives year-round in our living room. You can put about five ornaments on it and maybe a swirl of tinsel. Anything more, and the poor little dear would buckle. (Just like the entries in SFGate’s Charlie Brown Christmas tree photo contest.)
I’m no Scrooge, though, and not immune to the seasonal seduction of a big and bright Christmas tree. But I prefer to express my holiday cheer in other forms: namely, unwrappable or edible.
December 22, 2008
When is a million idling computers good for the planet?
Leo Hickman of The Guardian poses this question. IBM’s World Community Grid, a network of more than 400,000 computer users who own more than a million computers, has volunteered to pool their collective computer power to help a Harvard’ chemistry team discover an organic material that may pave the way for a less expensive and more efficient solar cell. In this case, most would agree that the payoff is worth the potential gain — but it’s a slippery slope:
At some point, our most essential services will need to be given priority when it comes to dishing out the remaining fossil fuels equitably. In theory, this will start to price out “non-essential” uses of such fuels.
But who is going to draw that line between essential and non-essential use? What, for example, would you place into the “essential” trolley? Two thousand miles’ worth of petro-fuelled driving a year? Enough energy to heat your living room to 18C during winter?
Given that we each lead very different lives, should each of us have a “free” minimum allowance for such essentials?
December 19, 2008
The most important year for climate change since 2001, when the Kyoto protocol (which set targets for cutting carbon-dioxide emissions) was agreed, will be 2009. The first period of the protocol runs out in 2012. The deal to replace it is supposed to be done at the United Nations’ Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, which starts on November 30th 2009 and is due to end on December 11th. No deal means that mankind gives up on trying to save the planet.
— Emma Duncan, from The Economist’s predictions for 2009.
December 17, 2008
Santa would want you to unplug those Christmas lights (after all, he lives on the North Pole)
I was in DC this weekend, where I learned a little about White House Christmas traditions. During World War II, President Roosevelt ordered that the holiday lights remain off out of respect for national electricity rationing. How cool would it be if Bush did something like that this year as a symbol of solidarity and sacrifice in the face of the greatest battle of our age?
In her second piece for the Huffington Post, Cathy Erway, blogger extraordinaire, bemoans the kind of kind of excessive holiday cheer that comes with a steep energy price tag:
In the lobby of my apartment building, there is a Christmas tree adorned with ornaments and colored lights. A boombox is placed conspicuously behind it, playing holiday tunes at higher-than-expected decimals. Both the lights and the music are kept on all day and night, welcoming the rest of the tenants and I each time we come home.
I appreciate the gesture on behalf of my building’s management. But in a time when public service announcements are urging residents to shut off their electronics when not in use, and companies worldwide are searching for ever more energy-saving solutions, it doesn’t set the tone right with me.
In an effort to revamp their power-greedy image, major landmarks are trimming the environmental impact of their spectacles. The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center proudly announced its switch to more energy-efficient LED lights last year. Times Square recently made the move towards reducing 190,000 kWh of energy and 200,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually, and the New Year’s Eve ball was also outfitted with LED lights. The Eiffel Tower decreased the length of its nightly light show from ten to five minutes this October, stressing an emphasis on sustainability rather than savings. (Imagine if, instead of bathing the tower of the Empire State Building in green light on Earth Day, it went au naturel?)….
December 15, 2008
You want my tax dollars? Then I want to see the precise production plans and timetables for the hybridization of all your cars and trucks within 36 months. I want every bailed-out car company to move to hybrid electric drive trains, because nothing would both improve mileage and emissions more — and also stimulate a whole new 21st-century, job-creating industry: batteries.
Big batteries that can store electricity for transportation and wind and solar generation are the indispensable enablers of the Energy Internet of the future. Any Detroit bailout has to serve that goal.
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